Mrs. Wilkes' Boardinghouse Cookbook: Recipes and Recollections from Her Savannah Table [Hardcover]

Sema Wilkes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 9, 2001

In 1943, a young and determined Sema Wilkes took over a nondescript turn-of-the-century boardinghouse on a sun-dappled brick street in historic downtown Savannah. Her goal was modest: to make a living by offering comfortable lodging and Southern home cooking served family style in the downstairs dining room. Mrs. Wilkes' reputation was strong and business was brisk from the beginning, but it was the coverage in Esquire and the New York Times, and even a profile on David Brinkley's evening news that brought Southern-food lovers from all over the world to her doorstep. Sema is now 95 years old, and four generations of Wilkeses help her keep the tables laden with platters of her legendary fried chicken, pork ribs, and biscuits, while friends and strangers pass bowls brimming with her sublime butterbeans, collard greens, mashed sweet potatoes, and banana pudding. The line snakes out the front door and down the street, where along with the locals and visitors, it's not uncommon to find Jimmy Carter or Roy Blount Jr. among other familiar faces waiting for their turn at Mrs. Wilkes' table. With over 300 recipes and culinary historian John T. Edge's colorful telling of Mrs. Wilkes' contribution to Savannah and Southern cuisine, this rich volume is a tribute to a way of cooking—and eating— that must not be forgotten.

• Recipient of Southern Living's Reader's Choice Award 2000.

• Mrs. Wilkes won the 1999 James Beard “America's Regional Classics” Award.

• Mrs. Wilkes' self-published recipe book, Famous Recipes, which became the foundation for MRS. WILKES' BOARDINGHOUSE COOKBOOK, has sold over 250,000 copies.

• Illustrated throughout with over 50 black-and-white photographs from Mrs. Wilkes' Boardinghouse and 25 color photos of her classic recipes.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Ninety-four year old Sema Wilkes has been running her boardinghouse in Savannah, Ga., since 1943, cooking up traditional Southern favorites biscuits, collard greens, hush puppies for a clientele of gentlemen farmers, Girl Scouts and Yankee tourists. Indeed, the remembrances of Mrs. Wilkes and her family and friends are so entertaining that the book is best approached as a memoir/oral history interrupted by recipes for soups, casseroles, fried delights and desserts. The book vividly portrays a few of the eatery's more irregular regulars, including one Spanish Civil War veteran who, always arriving via tricycle, ate there every weekday for three decades. Equally well-rendered are the strong women who have helped Mrs. Wilkes in the kitchen throughout the years, including the late Mildred Capers, who judged the doneness of her fried chicken by the sound of the oil in the fryer. But it's not clear how some of these dishes would fare outside of Mrs. Wilkes's delightful environs; the Fried Chicken recipe lists the needed ingredients: flour, evaporated milk, salt and pepper, but obviously, it is the context Southern hospitality, fresh ingredients and an experienced kitchen staff that make it special. Also, a few oddities included in the book would have perhaps been best left on the boardinghouse table a Tango Salad, for instance, with lemon gelatin, canned pineapple and pimentos. Nevertheless, this is a delightful homage to Southern life. (May)Forecast: The continuing interest in Southern food, along with an ecstatic blurb from Craig Claiborne, should help this book's sales.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Sema Wilkes has presided over her Savannah, GA, dining room for 68 years. At age 94, she still tastes every dish before it comes out of the kitchen, but now there are three other generations of her family working in the restaurant. Although "Mrs. Wilkes' " was originally a typical boardinghouse, feeding only its dozen or so roomers, good food was always her focus, and it became a restaurant soon after she took over in the 1940s. Today, there are lines around the block of people waiting to taste her Southern food at least 13 different dishes at every meal and "the boardinghouse" has a national reputation. But the cooking is much as it always was (one of her cooks has been there since the1950s): Buttermilk Chicken, Corn Pudding, the biscuits that Craig Claiborne described as "one of the greatest things, ever, to happen" in his life. Coauthor Edge's readable text provides the history of the restaurant and the people involved in it. Recommended for all regional American cooking collections.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Ten Speed Press (May 9, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580082572
• ISBN-13: 978-1580082570
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 0.7 x 10.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #114,361 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Home style cooking made easier!, June 7, 2001

By 

Beverly Jewell (Cedartown, Georgia USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mrs. Wilkes' Boardinghouse Cookbook: Recipes and Recollections from Her Savannah Table (Hardcover)

I have had the pleasure of eating at Mrs. Wilkes' Boardinghouse several times, but the last time I was in Savannah, the lines were so long waiting to get in, we finally gave up! Years ago, she signed her first cookbook for me, and I have used it many times. I now have this new book, and find the instructions simple and easy to follow. This is the food most people in the South grew up eating, but recipes vary, and sometimes are not pasted down to a new generation. I treasure this book, and highly recommend it to new, and also to experienced cooks! Indeed, it is home style cooking made easier! B Jewell

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Savannah Lore and Recipes. Good Look and Read, December 29, 2004

By 

B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mrs. Wilkes' Boardinghouse Cookbook: Recipes and Recollections from Her Savannah Table (Hardcover)

`Mrs. Wilkes' Boardinghouse Cookbook' is a collection of recipes attributed to Sema Wilkes of dishes served at her famous Savannah boarding house (which no longer takes in boarders). The recipes are augmented by a series of articles on the history of the Wilkes family and the restaurant by John T. Edge, a widely and favorably recognized writer on southern culinary matters.

The most interesting aspect of the recipes in this book is that they are as much an interest as an historical record as they are a basis of culinary inspiration. The most interesting books with which to compare this work may be, for example, `Rome, at Home' by Suzanne Dunaway and the books on Sicilian cookery by writer/actor Vincent Schiavelli. The most similar book I have seen is Ms. Sally Ann Robinson's charming little book, `Gullah Home Cooking the Daufuskie Way'. A non-culinary comparison may be to a manual on how to do decorative painting in the style of the Pennsylvania Dutch hex signs. I say this only to enhance the value you can anticipate from this notable book.

This volume contains recipes for `Comfort Food Central'. Ask a hundred second generation Americans to name their top five favorite dishes and recipes for virtually all these dishes will be in this book. Main dishes include fried chicken, chicken cacciatore, roast beef, beef bourguignonne, meatballs, meatloaf, chop suey, corned beef and cabbage, and chili. This is the typical collection of both classic Southern dishes mixed with Americanizations of famous foreign dishes. All other types of dishes show a similar selection of favorites. The dessert chapter stays just a bit closer to home by featuring primarily cakes, such as pound cake, red velvet cake, carrot cake, and fruitcake and pies (and cobblers) such as lemon meringue pie, sweet potato pie, pecan pie, peach pie, and blackberry pie.

Many of the savory recipes are simply `dump and heat', where the procedure could hardly be any simpler. Recipes for chili and beef bourguignonne which in some hands take on epic dimensions are so simple in this book that you need to look twice to be sure this is the dish being made. This simplicity is achieved in many cases by using one or more classic darlings of 1950's cooking, canned, condensed soup, canned mushrooms, bouillon cubes, French dressing, and bottled mayonnaise. This doesn't mean the results of these recipes are not tasty, it only means the dishes may be a lot different than what you may be expecting. This is definitely not Julia Child's beef bourguignonne. Even such staples of Southern cooking such as fried chicken are done in a highly abbreviated way with no brining and no buttermilk marinade.

Another caution with these recipes is that many have not been scaled down from boarding room proportions to suit a family of four. Still another concern is that like a lot of recipes in `Gullah Home Cooking the Daufuskie Way', there is a certain sameness in a lot of recipes. All the potato and macaroni and chicken and egg salads are about the same except for the star ingredient. Again, this doesn't mean they are poor recipes, it just means they all reflect a time when supermarkets didn't have radicchio, fennel, Belgian endive, celery root, and leeks. So, lots of recipes had to depend on celery, onions, and carrots.

Since this oversized book with lots of excellent pictures and really interesting text lists at only $29.95, the quality of these pictures and text and the `archeological' interest of the recipes is more than enough to make this book a worthy addition to your cookbook collection. If you want to make pies, read Nick Malgieri. If you want to bake cakes, read Maida Heatter. If you want to make meatballs, read Marcella Hazan. If you want to make barbecue, read Steve Raichlen. If you want classic Southern cooking, read Edna Lewis. If you want to make beef bourguignonne, for heavens sake, read Julia Child, Tony Bourdain, or Thomas Keller. But, if you want a taste of Savannah boardinghouse cooking, this is your book.

Aside from supporting recipes for preparations such as meringue, sauces, dressings, and piecrusts, there are virtually no cooking instructions here. Even the index fails now and then in that there are prepared ingredients mentioned in some recipes for which there are no entries in the index. So, I have no clue to how to make a `Kitchen Bouquet' mentioned as an ingredient in several recipes. And, I suspect a great part of the quality of the food at Mrs. Wilkes boardinghouse can be attributed to the skill of the staff and to the quality of the ingredients rather than to the excellence of the recipes.

As long as you buy this book for the right reasons, you will not be disappointed.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Raves from Transplanted Magnolia, December 4, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Mrs. Wilkes' Boardinghouse Cookbook: Recipes and Recollections from Her Savannah Table (Hardcover)

I have over 100 cookbooks in my collection, so it is rare that I will sit down and read a new one cover-to-cover -- but that's exactly what I did last night with Mrs. Wilkes. Setting aside the recipes for a moment, her description of life in the South in my parents' era is priceless. Now for the food: also priceless! I've been searching for years for my great-aunt's recipe for Coconut Cake -- Mrs. Wilkes has it. My Mother never fixed Creamed Corn from scratch - but Mrs. Wilkes does. All those dishes you remember fondly from family reunions and favorite aunts - they're here! Mrs. Wilkes has them! Hurrah!